I was just emptying the full collection bin on my shredder and I somehow managed to dump the entire contents on the office floor. Crap. It is a confetti shredder and it makes little specs of paper about the size of two grains of rice end to end. I picked up what I could by hand, and then sucked the rest up with the Dustbuster. I drained the batteries. I got all of the shreds up, but there is paper dust that I can still see. I will have to get the big vacuum out for that.

Sheri is at a website launch party/BBQ for her friend that knitted the blanket for Goliath, scarf for me, and doily for her. I was going to go, but I still need to do more work on my presentation for class on Tuesday.

We dropped the car off at the dealership this morning for a laundry list of problems:

• Air conditioning
• "Service engine soon" light
• Brakes are pulsing
• Turn signals don't work
• Oil change

I think we have had the air conditioning on that car charged annually for the last few years, so last year they charged it with coolant that had ultra-violet dye. They should be able to shine a black light in the engine compartment and see where the leak is, and hopefully fix it for good.

Last year they also replaced the turn signal switch. He said the switch might still be under warranty.

The brakes are pulsing pretty bad. I hope there is enough metal left on the rotors for them to turn rather than to needing to install brand new rotors.

I have been kicking around the idea of getting another graduate degree now that I am done with my MBA. I think I would probably be interested in an IT related degree. Maybe an MS in Telecommunications Systems. No hurry, and I will probably wait a year before making a decision. As long as the Bank is paying for it, and the economy seems so uncertain right now, I might as well take advantage of it. I really enjoyed my MBA classes, and I think know I would enjoy IT classes even more.

Sheri's test results came back negative! Yeah! She can take her pills again!

I went to a co-worker's desk to ask her a question. She wasn't there, but her PC was unlocked and her web browser was open. I did a search on "syphilis support" and then clicked on a link that right across the top of the page in HUGE letters that you can see from the aisle it says "Sexually Transmitted Diseases". What fun to torment your co-workers.

I don't go camping, but I have always wanted a kerosene lantern. I just think the idea is neat. Dad gave me his old one, but all of the gaskets, seals, pump, etc. had gotten hard and brittle.

I finally got around to changing my comment provider on this blog. I changed it to the one that I set Tim and Lisa up with, and the one that Sheri uses. It seems to be more stable, and I will now get an e-mail when someone leaves a comment for me. Before I just had to look through my posts to see if there were any comments. Easy to miss.

As a result, any old comments will be removed from the site. Sorry.

The super-secret government-trained attack piglet program has just been announced. Here they are shown in training bringing down a full grown tiger.

A polar bear investigates the submarine top of USS Connecticut during a Navy ice exercise near Prudhoe Bay off the northern coast of Alaska on April 27, 2003 in this photographic handout. James Watkins, chairman of a presidential oceans commission, traveled abaoard the sub to find out more about research on climate change from a Navy ice station for Artic research, from where the photo was taken. (AP Photo/U.S. Navy, HO)

The Lyrics to Sheri's New Theme Song

RADIOACTIVE by The Firm

Well I'm not uptight
Not unattracted
Turn me on tonight
Cause I'm radioactive
Radioactive

There's not a fight
And I'm not your captive
Turn me loose tonight
Cause I'm radioactive
Radioactive

I want to stay with you
I want to play with you baby
I want to lay with you
And I want you to know

Got to concentrate
don't be distractive
Turn me on tonight
Cause I'm radioactive
Radioactive
Radioactive
Radioactive

I want to stay with you
I don't want to play with you
I want just to lay with you
And I want you to know

Got to concentrate
don't be distractive
Turn me on tonight
Cause I'm radioactive oh yeah
Oh yeah radioactive
Don't you stand, stand too close
You might catch it

If your PC has Windows XP, there is a neat feature called ClearType that, for some reason, ships disabled. It changes your on-screen text from looking like the top box to looking like the text in the bottom box:

There are two ways to turn it on. The cool way is to go the on-line ClearType Tuner at the Microsoft site. It gives you several boxes of text and asks you to click on the box that looks the best. You do that a couple of times, and then it sets your PC for the best resolution. (Kind of like at the optometrist when he goes back and forth between different lenses repeatedly and asks which looks better.)

The other way just turns it on or off and doesn't give you any options. It just uses the default options. To do that:

1. Right click anywhere on your desktop and select "Properties".
2. Click the "Appearance" tab at the top of the window.
3. Click the "Effects" button.
4. Make sure that there is a check mark in the box in front of "Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts", and make sure that "ClearType" is displayed in the drop down box immediately below that.
5. Click the "OK" button.

Hope you like it.

For some reason, if a girl is wearing a bebe tee-shirt, she is usually very very attractive. Usually. Not always, but usually.

There is a new feature in Windows XP that I read about tonight called Remote Assistance. If you are having a problem with your computer that you can't figure out, you go to the Remote Assistance area, enter the e-mail address of the person you want to help you, and they get sent an invitation and some kind of password key. That person can then click a button in the e-mail and access your computer just like they were actually there. How cool is that? Both sides have to be running Windows XP, and, of course, both sides have to be connected to the internet.

The person sending the invitation call also specify how long the password is good for. For example, 1 hour, and after an hour the password expires and they can't get back into your computer. The person sending the invitation also has to click a button when the helper actually does try to log-into the computer. It's not like you are just opening your computer to the world. Very clever.

So now instead of a friend calling me up and describing a problem, and me trying to diagnose long distance, I can actually take a look myself, see the error messages, etc. and fix things a lot quicker. Also, the person with the broken computer can see exactly what I am doing. They will see the mouse move around, words being typed, etc. right on their screen.

I think people that say "That is wrong on so many levels" don't know what it means, and they say it just because they think it sounds cool.

We bought three fish for the aquarium right after work on Friday night. The main one we went to buy was an oscar. In case you don't know about oscars, they get very big, and are very mean and aggressive. We have actually been deciding if we really wanted to get an oscar for the last few months. So we now officially have an aggressive tank rather than a community tank.

The store only had four in stock. Two were full grown, and two were albino babies. The full grown ones are about the size of a very good sized sunfish, but beefier and wider. We got one of the albino babies for $5. He is half white and half orange/red, and about the size of a gold fish. So right now, he looks like a gold fish. That's were all similarities stop.

The one cichlid we have I feed about three shrimp pellets twice a day. Cichlids are generally considered to be more on the aggressive side, but not unmanageable. He is the only one that has a mouth big enough to gulp one of those pellets down. When I was giving the tank its dinner last night, this little tiny oscar, the size of an average gold fish, swoops in on the cichlid's pellet, gulps it all in its mouth, and scoots back to his corner! He can't even close his mouth all the way with the pellet in his mouth. He is going to be a monster.

I cut the grass today.
Watched the Indy 500.
Cooked a mess of drumsticks on the grill.
Made a very good batch of tahini sauce to dip our chicken in.
Talked to Mom for about 30 minutes.

We still have to return the movies to the store tonight. We plan on getting another one to watch tonight or tomorrow. The video store is closed on Mondays.

Yeah!!!! Tim Burton is going to do a re-make of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (a.k.a. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory). I can hardly wait. I hope it is released during Thanksgiving. That is when I first remember watching it.

Tim Burton has such a unique style. I think I will have to own this one on DVD.

It doesn't look too good for Annika. She is almost done on the front nine and is +2 overall, which makes her tied for 76th place with 7 other golfers. Only the top 70 make the cut.

Can you believe this is Jewel? What a totally new look for her.

I just know there is a hilarious caption to this picture, I just can't think of what it is.

Annika tees off today at 1:43 PM CDT.

So if Annika is +1 along with 16 other guys, how do they break the tie? Anyone know?

Annika is tied for 65th place with 17 other golfers right now. Only the top 70 make the cut.

This is a picture of the new engines that Metra will be replacing their old engines with. There are something like 30 new engines and 300 new passenger cars that they have purchased. The replacement will take three or four years to complete.



This is what the current engines look like.

I just received a voice mail from Lisa. They have three different offers on their house and the buyer's realtors will be having a price war tonight. Yeah!!!!

Tim and Lisa were worried that they were not going to sell the house quickly and be stuck with two mortgage payments for several months.

Annika is now tied for 60th at 1 over par with 13 other golfers.

Annika Sorenstam is currently tied for 21st positon with 10 other golfers, and is 1 under par.

This is a link to the live leader board for the Bank of America Colonial PGA tournament for anyone interested in seeing how Annika Sorenstam does today. She is supposed to tee off around 9:00 AM CDT.

Memorial Day

Remember to buy a poppy for the Veterans today.

We have comfortable temperatures in the low to mid 70's for Chicago today, but the humidity is high. Between 2 PM and 5 PM the dewpoint is forecast to be over 65°.

I enjoyed the iced coffee I made myself last night from the left-over party coffee, so I made myself another one at work today. Our coffee machines make like four gallon batches of coffee, so it is no big deal to fill up my 32 ounce plastic cup. Plus, not many people drink the decaf on our floor.

Tim and Lisa bought a beautiful house in Michigan today! The backyard looks big enough to raise a few horses.

There was about half of the 96 ounce box of coffee left over that we took to the party, and I knew that it would just get thrown out, so we took it home for iced coffee.

The donuts were a big hit. We also picked up a stack of the Krispy Kreme paper hats, and those were a big hit too.

When we got home I weed-whacked the front and back yard; sprayed some RoundUp herbicide on weeds; and then took a shower.

Tonight, I still need to:

• send a check to the IRS for an adjustment from our 2001 taxes
• pay our credit card bill
• fill out the Ashland U. application to graduate and get it in the mail along with a check

After that we are going to watch the CBS miniseries Hitler; The Rise of Evil. We always like to make little events out of miniseries. We still have good memories about watching Shogun together in my little apartment south of the OSU campus. We also have liked some of the Steven King miniseries.

We are going to a very informal wedding reception. It is being held at the house of a friend of the newlyweds. They were going to have it catered by Portillo’s, but they didn’t put their order in soon enough, so they are going to have Jimmy John's subs.

We are going to stop at Krispy Kreme and pick up a couple dozen donuts and a box of coffee to take along.

I heard the other day that Schick is developing a new razor with four blades!

This sign would have been appeciated when Mom and Dad took us to the Pittsburgh Zoo when I was like 5 years old.

I just heard a great expletive on TV. The guy yelled “nose nuggets!” I like it.

Sheri drove into the city to see a gay friend give up his crown in a drag beauty contest. I planned on going, but when it came time to go I wasn’t up to it.

I was crawling around the attic today in blown fiberglass insulation. I was seeing if I could take up the slack in the cable TV coax cable.

I just got back from Best Buy where I bought the game IGI‑2; Covert Strike. I installed the demo version last week that just lets you play the first level, and I really liked it.

I stopped at the grocery store on the way home to get some more tea bags for iced tea. On the front of the box it now proudly proclaims that each serving of tea contains 190 mg of antioxidants. I thought that was interesting.

I am brewing up some iced tea now; I will install my new game after I post this, and will probably play that well into the evening.

Birthdays Birthdays Birthdays

I did a lot of updating of the dates on my birthday page. It has people's name, month and day of birth, and it calculates each person's current age. I even made a spot for Miss Baby R. due in September!

The permanent link is in the right side column with a little birthday cake in front of it.

I just got done downloading the America's Army game. It is about 400 megabytes (.4 gigabytes) and it took about 30 minutes to download. I am going to shut down everything else, install it, and probably be up too late.

I cut the grass tonight and finished my homework that was due this evening.

Kewl!

I plan to download this game from the internet this weekend. It is free from the US Army! It was released last July. Is based on the same rendering engine that Unreal is based on. It has cost $7 million so far to develop. The typical computer game costs between $2 and $6 million. It has received very good reviews for game play, graphics, realism, etc. I was planning on buying IGI 2 this weekend, but this should keep me satisfied for a while!

Here are some screen shots from the game. Pretty impressive.

Some days I blog a little. Some days I blog a lot.

I mentioned to a co-worker that Tim and Lisa will be moving to Grand Rapids. The first thing she asked was if they like to golf. Apparently Grand Rapids has a huge number of golf courses.

I have to drop my work laptop off before I leave tonight. They are going to erase my entire hard drive and install Windows XP and Office 2000.

I have to make sure I copy anything I want to save from my C:\ drive to a network server before I drop it off. I think I have everything covered, but it still makes me a little nervous. Like I will pick it up Friday morning and suddenly remember something very important that I forgot to save.

AmEx Efficiency

I have four charges on my corporate American Express card that total over $3,500 that I did not make. I saw the first charge when I logged on to their web site about a month ago when I was submitting an expense report. I called the customer service number, and they said to call after May 14 if the charges are still there. Something about when the month closes out, there could be a correcting entry that comes through that would reverse the entries.

I logged in this morning, and the charges are still there. I called, and they said they are still processing; call back in 24 to 48 hours. If the charges are still on the account, they will open an investigation.

Sheesh!

Let yourself go

I just heard an ad on the radio for a Bassett Furniture retailer. The catch phrase they kept repeating, in a wispy female voice, was "Let yourself go."

I think they meant go ahead and treat yourself to a little luxury. I pictured a 350 pound greasy comic book collector geek deciding whether he should eat the fifth bag of potato chips for dinner while sitting on one of their couches. He then hears the radio ad "Let yourself go." and goes ahead and opens a new bag of chips.

Jerusalem Salad

We might have found a new favorite at the middle eastern restaurant (Haifa Cafe) we have been having lunch at downtown. It is called Jerusalem salad, and here is a recipe that I found on the web that looks like it would be pretty close to what we had today.

1/3 cup tahini
2 Tbs. Olive Oil
1-2 cloves garlic, crushed
Juice of 1/2 lemon
3 Tbs. parsley
Salt to taste
Water
1 cucumber
6 roma tomatoes, or 3 regular tomatoes
fresh chopped parsley

Directions:
Mix first 6 ingredients in a salad bowl; add water to thin the tahini. Stir thoroughly to make a dressing.

Dice cucumber and tomatoes. Toss in dressing with parsley. You can let this sit for an hour to allow the flavors to meld.

Fried bologna sandwiches from Waldo, Ohio are mentioned in section1, page 9 of today's Chicago Tribune!

The article is about old barns with Mail Pouch chewing tobacco ads painted on them. The title of the article is Restorers make barn a spittin' image of bygone era.

It has been years since I have had one. They are delicious! I think the bar is called The G&R Sports Bar, but I could be wrong.

Grand Rapids Info Page

I have started a Grand Rapids page to help Tim and Lisa out. The link is in the right-hand column, just a few lines down from the Weather Pixie. As I find sites that I think will be useful, I will add them to the page.

Fun news!

Tim has been promoted at work, and will be the branch manager at their office in Grand Rapids, Michigan! They will be moving in just one or two months. Grand Rapids should only be about a three hour drive from our house.

Lisa already has an arrangement with her company to continue working for them remotely from home doing payroll, etc. on a part-time basis, with occasional trips back to Toledo for meetings.

There is a car-ferry called the S.S. Badger that makes daily runs between Ludington, Michigan and Manitowoc, Wisconsin. When we visit them, we will probably try that at least once. It would actually be longer than just driving there, but it would be fun. From our house to Manitowoc is about a 3 hour drive, and from Ludington to Grand Rapids is about a 1.5 hour drive.

I have some concerns about them living in Michigan, though. I will have to make sure that they have plenty of Ohio State Buckeye flags, shirts, etc. to deter the evil Wolverines from corrupting them.

Friday Morning Update

I am not sick with an illness anymore, but my biannual allergies are in full force. I just wanted to stay home in bed, but I already took several days off the last couple of weeks. I feel pretty awful.

Dad’s second birthday present from us finally arrived yesterday. We got him a six month subscription to the Sunday Chicago Tribune. We also got him a lightweight Gerber pocket knife.

Goliath has been unusually active and happy last night and this morning. We played hard in the backyard last night for almost 30 minutes. His favorite game is him chasing my practice fishing lure. I cast it across the yard, and he stalks and chases it. I moves the blades of grass like a mouse or chipmunk running. It gets is hunting instincts worked up. I would put the fishing rod down, and he would start barking at it, wanting to keep going.

He also went for his favorite ball yesterday. Before last night, he hasn’t picked up a ball since before his cancer symptoms started. We were happy to see that. Whenever he gets in trouble, he always goes and gets his ball for us. It’s like he’s thinking “Everyone loves a ball! They can’t be mad at me if I bring them my ball. This will distract my people from what I did.” (He wasn’t in trouble last night, it just occurred to me to relate that.)

The only thing I can think of is we didn’t give him canned dog food yesterday; we just gave him his old kibble. Maybe the canned food is too rich and was slowing him down. It was good to get him to eat when he didn’t want to eat at all, but maybe it is time to go back to his normal diet.

It is going to be torture if I feel this way during the weekend, but I have to cut the grass, and get into the attic and pull the cable TV wire back into the house, and then staple it to a rafter. Right now it is hanging off the back of the house with a lot of slack. We are also going to buy a carpet steam cleaner. Our carpets have been taking a beating with a sick dog, and we are getting tired of renting Rug Doctors.

It is supposed to be very nice in Chicago today; almost 80°, no more rain, but humidity will be a little bit of a factor. The dewpoint will top off at about 60°. (A dewpoint of 65° and above is generally considered to be uncomfortable.)

We are pretty sure that we are going to register our own internet domain name soon and use it as a place to store pictures and experiment with web technologies (on-line databases, Java, web design, etc.).

We are now trying to come up with a domain name that is:

• easy for friends and family to remember
• doesn’t reveal any personal information about our identity
• sounds professional
• short
• no non-alphanumeric characters (dashes, underscores, etc.)
• nothing that could change (e.g. don’t include Chicago in the name in case we move to New York)
• would prefer a .com domain rather than a .net domain, but that wouldn’t be a showstopper

Our first choice, basw.com, is already taken.

Here is a list of possibilities we have kicked around so far that are still available:

• bandsw.com
• basw.net
• bnsw.net
• ebasw.com
• ibasw.com
• 4basw.com
• teambasw.com
• wearebasw.com (we are basw)

Let us know if you have any other ideas, or if you really like one of the ones above.

The camera that I got Sheri for our anniversary has some neat features and software that comes with it. There is a panoramic picture mode that lets you take a series of pictures as you rotate in place, and then when you upload them to your PC, there is software that stitches them all together into one seamless panoramic picture.

The panoramic picture that I created today is from lunch today. We were sitting on the second floor of the Sears Tower in the public lunch table area. We brought back lunch from a new middle eastern restaurant that just opened up across the street from the Tower.

The far left side of the picture, with Sheri's face, is from my seat facing due east. The outside light that is filtering around her head is from the east entrance on S Franklin St.

The neon sign in the middle of the picture is facing due south. The restaurant is called Mrs. Levy's. We saw her shuffle by while we were eating. She is actually kind of famous. The Levy's restaurant chain has 17 restaurants.

The far right side of the picture is facing due west and is looking over the S Wacker Dr entrance.

I got this e-mail from my professor just a little bit ago. It is feedback from my paper that was due last week:

This is what I’m looking for in a question write-up—solid work! Feel free to incorporate more of your personal work experience (and insights from managing your Capstone team) into your second question write-up (at the end of the course).

Grade: A

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions via email or phone.

Best, Jill

Fun optical illusion.

There is a fried chicken place in Chicago called Harold's Chicken Shack. People love it! We even heard someone say if they had Harold's in south Chicago that they would make a fortune. (They are only in the Loop.)

I think it's good, but not "to die for" good. They do have some of the best chicken livers I have ever had, though. Anyway, their logo cracks me up. (I scanned it from one of their bags.) I guess that is Harold wearing a crown and robe chasing after one of his famous chickens with an axe. Isn't a logo supposed to make you crave their product? This one just makes me feel sorry for the chicken.


Because it is fried chicken, I don't make it a habit to go their all the time. Actually I have been there only three times. The first was on a Friday during Lent, so I had their fish. I forgot what kind it was, but it was good, except for the bones. Too many bones for me.

The second time I tried the chicken. And the last time I had the chicken livers. A HUGE portion. When I go back that is what I will get. Only as a special treat though.

My favorite chicken place in the Loop is called Chicken Planet. They grill their chicken on an open flame. Their grill is about 20 feet long, and at lunch time the entire grill is covered with whole split chickens. They marinate the chicken, so it is very juicy and seasoned just right. I can really only identify garlic and salt. You order either a ¼, ½, or a whole chicken, and one side or two. Their only sides are mashed, seasoned rice, coleslaw, and I think beans. Every order comes with a piece of grilled pita bread and a little plastic cup of homemade salsa. The last time I went I got a whole chicken, but no sides. When you order, the grill guy plucks a bird from the grill and tosses it on a big cutting block. With a big heavy cleaver he deftly makes a few whacks and then tosses your pieces into a Styrofoam take-out clamshell. Mmmmmm..... and cheap prices.